Gog Is Getting Acquired by Its Original Co-Founder
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The gaming world is abuzz as GOG is acquired by its original co-founder, sparking curiosity about the backstory behind CD PROJEKT's decision to spin off its beloved DRM-free game platform. Some commenters are speculating that this move might be a preemptive strike against a potential acquisition, allowing GOG to maintain its mission while its parent company focuses on game development. Meanwhile, others are seizing the opportunity to request new features, such as official Linux support or improved remote desktop capabilities, with some suggesting that GOG could empower the community by opening up their protocol. As one commenter wistfully noted, GOG is a rare "oasis of ethical businesses in tech," making this development all the more intriguing.
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> Why is CD PROJECT doing this?
> Selling GOG fits CD PROJEKT’s long-term strategy. CD PROJEKT wants to focus its full attention on creating top-quality RPGs and providing our fans with other forms of entertainment based on our brands. This deal lets CD PROJEKT keep that focus, while GOG gets stronger backing to pursue its own mission.
> What is GOG's position in this?
> To us at GOG, this feels like the best way to accelerate what is unique about GOG. Michał Kiciński is one of the people who created GOG around a simple idea: bring classic games back, and make sure that once you purchase a game, you have control over it forever. With him acquiring GOG, we keep long-term backing that is aligned with our values: freedom, independence, control, and making games stay playable over time.
Third option is to ensure the downloader runs under proton, which I think it does but haven’t tried.
https://gogapidocs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
The problem is mostly that their backend isn't wired for Linux builds so you can't use the APIs for native Linux versions.
However, neither support 2 key features of GOG Galaxy:
1. cloud saves
2. achievements
These are 2 of the most significant features of competitors like Steam, IMO, so missing them for GOG on Linux is unfortunate.
Please don't lie :/
If you think that's a "lie", consult a dictionary.
Given I'm using Heroic from AUR on a supported OS, and installed with default settings, I consider this cloud save support to be less than stellar, but that's a separate matter, I'm not trying to turn this thread into a support issue.
As for achievements, I wouldn't say it's had support for "a long time"; they were added in August 2024 (v2.15.1).
The whole point of GOG is that you don't need a "client" -- it's just a store.
If you want to use something other than a standard web browser to install your games, there are plenty of options, including projects like Lutris and lgogdownloader.
Their Galaxy backend only handles Windows and macOS builds of games. Linux builds aren't included now.
Another piece is multiplayer integration that games can ship. That depends on their support too (authentication, matching and etc).
But again, the whole point of GOG is that you don't need a special client in the first place. You just get ordinary installers, and don't have to deal with the game requiring a third party's proprietary launcher.
CD Project makes great games, but gaming industry is all-or-nothing. They already had colossal flop at their previous release. If another flop happens shutting down GOG is clearly would be on a table as a cost cutting measure.
You have to give kudos to CD PROJEKT for not just abandoning the game after a bad launch (which is what every other major studio would have done in its place) but patiently fixing problems and constantly adding content over 5 years to get to the state it is in today.
Afaik CDPR doesn't make many games. If one flops, that might be the end of them. I don't see abandoning a game as a valid option for them from a financial perspective. Makes much more sense to fix the issues and sell more.
Kinda how you trust paradox strategy titles to get several years of updates and expansions.
CDPR just was lucky enough to make enough money of failed release to fix it. Most companies get no chance to do it.
And the Switch 2 port likely cost considerable engineering effort and underperformed as well.
Maybe I'm not contributing meaningfully to the dialogue, but talking about total sales across a 5 year lifespan means you're necessarily including all those packrat users who picked it up on deep discount and haven't even booted it up once (or, like me, played two hours and in that initial window wasn't especially grabbed by the story, characters, or progression systems that the game was wanting me to engage with). It's different when something really pops off on release and sells all those copies in the first few months.
After tons of patches and DLCs its just became a very very good game. Just not what was promissed.
Most customers only hear about a game when it is released and reviewed and/or recommended by a friend.
Nolife hardcore fans will also be the the first to buy your game, review it and tell everyone if they did not liked it.
CDPR got huge amount of trust after Witcher 3 and they mostly had to start over after CP2077 release.
EA can survive if 4/10 of their games flops completely, but company like CDPR will likely just end there.
...which was a complete shitshow on release as well...
86% of all-time Steam reviews for Cyberpunk 2077 are positive, and if you only look at recent reviews, it's 94% positive.
I don't think the game has architectural problems that prevent it from being a massive success.
Cyberpunk was really successful from $$ standpoint and continues to generate huge revenue even today.
> Is GOG financially unstable? No. GOG is stable and has had a really encouraging year. In fact, we’ve seen more enthusiasm from gamers towards our mission than ever before.
I'm really happy to hear this, as I always feared their hard stance on no-DRM would scare off publishers and developers, but seems that fear might have been overstated. This year I personally also started buying more games on GOG than Steam, even when they were available on Stream. Prior to 2025 I almost exclusively used Steam unless it wasn't available there, but now GOG is #1 :)
Glad it's moving in even better directions, thank you Team GOG!
Companies with strong financial performance don't tend to use words like "encouraging". That is the language you get from companies that are in trouble and hoping for recovery.
Talking about people's enthusiasm for their mission is just straight up dodging the question itself.
01.01.2025 to 30.09.2025 net profit 910 thousand PLN I think.
01.01.2024 to 30.09.2024 net profit 32 thousand PLN.
With "from 1 January to 30 September 2025: 4.2365 PLN/EUR and from 1 January to 30 September 2024:4.3022 PLN/EUR."
It is not that much. So splitting it off probably make sense for the CD Projekt.
See: https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2025/11/c...
Starting from page 28.
They lose ~72% of every PLN/EUR/USD they bring in. Their financial statement is Really confusingly laid out. However, pg 36 has comparison. GOG is actually not THAT tiny of a segment (percentage-wise, absolute EUR / PLN numbers are still small). 49k PLN / 300k PLN for the CD PROJEKT Red and 350k total.
Compared to CD PROJEKT RED, insanely horrible cost of sales ratio.
July 1st, 2025 to Sept. 30th, 2025 (Numbers are in PLN, directly from document)
January 1st, 2025 to Sept. 30th, 2025 (Numbers are in PLN, directly from document) PLN numbers can be verified (GOG quarterly is really on the order of 10,000 EUR) by looking at pages 30-31 with export sales summaries.For comparison to the 72% ratio, their main video game creation business spends 7-8% on cost of sales.
From page 8 "Selling expenses represents costs of marketing activities relating to the GOG.COM platform and the work on the development and processing of sales executed through that platform."
From some of the rest of the document, it seems like "maybe" some of that is prepayments and costs related to providing the software.
Personal view, while it may be beneficial to not have to deal with GOG from an operational perspective, a significant percentage of sales are on the platform for their own software, and CD PROJEKT's title releases heavily influence sales figures on GOG, so it may end up limiting themselves from an otherwise beneficial distribution channel. Probably provides better negotiating position also if you're trying to barter with Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Valve, ect... However, if the partnership continues with the next owners, may not be an issue.
"Cost of Sales" is 100% "Cost of goods for resale and materials sold"
and "The Cost of goods for resale and materials sold represents mainly the cost of sales of goods for resale and materials sold via the GOG.COM platform"
Kind of self referential. Everything else is in the CD PROJEKT RED group (Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition on Nintendo Switch 2 cartridges).
If your suspicion is correct then that would also imply that historical games are either almost always the same 70/30, or GOG is not really making that much on "historical" games (ie, most of the money is recent indie releases).
Notably, its really difficult to find anything other than an online article that actually talks about the 70/30 split situation. Google links to Wikipedia for evidence that then links to a 2013 Engadget article. Nothing appears to actually spell out the financial terms on GOG's actual site.
If you happen to know where that type of legalese is on the GOG site, that would actually a helpful ref.
> Consolidated net earnings during the reporting period stood at 193 million PLN – 2.5 times more than during the corresponding period of the previous year, which results in a net profitability of 55%.
Maybe I don't understand "profits above all" sufficiently well as some of my peers, but that seems Good Enough to me.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Europe
The first two numbers perhaps make sense, the 4,3022 looks like EUR/ PLN exghange rate..
GOG is now becoming private like Valve rather than publicly traded.
This years DOScember was really huge. Tons of streamers and viewers on Twitch for example, retro gaming is picking up steam (/s).
For the duration of your life, to be fair.
If you buy and download something form GOG, it is yours.
Usually indie games tend to be DRM-free though, so if an indie game isn't available on GOG or Zoom Platform (another DRM-free store), i end up buying on Steam.
That is not true as a global rule. Game developers can release fully independent versions of their games even on steam.
Delisted games tend to stay in your library for redownload.
I never understood the cynicism for digital media, it’s been multiple decades now and the model clearly works.
Obviously I prefer zero DRM but it’s also not a general requirement as long as it’s reasonable and stays out of the way like it does on Steam.
It is laughable to think that digital media "clearly works". Companies shut down and stores shutter all the time. In most cases there is no recourse for customers, because – surprise – you didn't actually own the rights to what you bought, just a revocable license. You have to be pretty young and/or naive to think that this can't eventually happen to Steam as well.
> change countries
> oh, you own this album for Bulgaria, but not for the US, so you can no longer play it
I took my digital media with me along with my computer, and all was not fine.
1. Even though Gabe is formally CEO he from his own words was barelly controllibg company for years. He spend more time on his other projects.
2. Flat structure and and a small team. I know few people who has worked at Valve and while there are som downsides company of ~400 employees with a lot of internal power play is just more resilient than normal corporation. Many of people on the team are just rich enough already and they dont need to go and cash out.
3. From what is publicly known Valve is family owned basically since Gabe own major part of company. And while a lot of people would hate example of e.g Ubisoft its good example how family controlled business often sink before selling out.
4. It would be just hard to sell Valve and remove control from the team without destroying both company and gaming community goodwill.
Yet I fully agree that Valve just like other company can be sold off just for userbase and run to the ground.
Valve just have better chance to stay customer friendly than your overall VC/PE/BlackRock owned corporation with 10,000 employees and 50 for-gire top management people.
The time he spends on Valve day to day is irrelevant to the question of what would happen if those actually running the company decided to do something stupid like taking games away from people vs. what would happen in the same scenario without Gabe around.
> Many of people on the team are just rich enough already and they dont need to go and cash out.
Rich people are largely the kind that can never have enough money.
> From what is publicly known Valve is family owned basically since Gabe own major part of company.
And there is no reason to believe his heirs will want to keep the company rather than cash out for the right offer just because Gabe wouldn't have.
> It would be just hard to sell Valve and remove control from the team without destroying both company and gaming community goodwill.
That has never been an a showstopper for vulture capitalists.
Who will own and run Steam 30 years from now? Gabe Newell will be long-gone, his nebobaby next-CEO will be closing in on retirement if they don't check-out early to enjoy their vast wealth like Gabe has done.
What does Steam look like 60 years from now? Adults using it today are all dead and all of their licenses revoked forever, the games removed from circulation gone forever because nobody can ever have a license to use them again.
There's a lot of room for improvement securing some sort of legacy for Steam.
In fact I used "most" but I can't name one that couldn't be played.
Found some other options for now, but probably I need to shell out the $3 for a modern port or run a whole emulated windows95.
Given the lengths the Windows development team has gone to, to preserve backward compatibility, to the point that there was individual-game-specific workarounds codified in Windows, makes this claim the same as the GP’s, that Steam will change 30-60 years from now.
The cynic in me thinks you’re both right, mind.
Does it matter? You are treating this like these games are some valuable collector's items, when they really are just toys you play once and then never touch again for the most part.
But let's assume you had physical copies of all of these games you own on Steam. Once you are gone, there is a > 90% chance that whoever inherits it, will throw it away, just like Millenials now are throwing away all this junk they are inheriting that Boomers used to collect.
The point is, Steam is good enough for all practical purposes, which is to acquire and play games in the now.
One thing you are missing with your logic is that "throw it out" is probably more like "give to charity", the unwanted goods are not necessarily being destroyed and may be redistributed to people who do value them. If my kids didn't want my Steam account I'm sure there's others who would, and preservation groups and museums that would probably take it.
The fact that somewhere deep down in their EULA there might be words that make it clear that you're not really "buying" anything, just renting/leasing/whatever, wouldn't stand in court since the important part is the big shiny "Buy now" button, and "buying" has a specific meaning here.
So yeah, the only way they could "take the games away from you" is if Steam went bancrupt
Data-hoarding archivists don’t like to hear this, but this is how it’s worked for all of human history. It’s not practical to consume and remember all the media every person has ever published.
This is getting totally beside the issue of DRM.
What will happen is that the greatest games will be remembered if they’re lucky and the rest will be discarded by time, even if they are DRM-free and unencumbered by reaching public domain status.
Can you name your favorite silent movie? How about your second favorite? How about your 10th favorite?
It's not about you being able to "consume it all", it's about future generations being able to look back and see how gaming and humanity evolved.
My favorite song from roughly 1492 is a small ditty I came across some years ago called Branle Englese, amongst many centuries-old pieces of classical music I enjoy playing.
Do you recognize the value of other history or is it just games that we should forget, rather than challenge a fairly recent status quo that emerged and undermines their preservation?
The reality is that humans tend to discard media over time. Songs and stories that didn’t resonate with audiences are lost forever. We even lose entire languages.
What will happen is that well-regarded media is preserved and a lot of it is forgotten.
That happens regardless of DRM or no DRM.
Those items will eventually become public domain but if nobody cares about them, yeah, they might disappear.
And again, that’s okay. It’s impractical for all media that has ever been created to survive for generations and generations.
You can sync up your Steam wishlist (it’s a little weird to setup but once you figured it out it works).
I almost never buy games directly from steam anymore, there’s almost always someone else with a discount on steam keys.
And sometimes GOG has the best deal!
What is a company/individual if not a reseller if they're selling Steam keys? You cannot sell Steam keys without being Steam or the developer itself, and not be called a "reseller". Or what sites are you referring to here, stuff like Humble Bundle where you get Steam keys with the bundles?
Real stores sell steam keys because they are selling directly from the developers. Steam is actually nice (or preempting monopoly talk, depending on your view) in that it allows that (I think there are limits, but IIRC rather generous)
And how did these "real stores" get those Steam keys unless they bought them, maybe even directly from the developers? Or are you saying game developers hand out these keys for free to the store, then the store sends the developer money for each key they sell? I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense.
Key reseller: https://www.loaded.com
You really don't need to be so combatative.
Requiring a network-connected proprietary client to install the software is itself a form of DRM.
> For software with other forms of DRM built-in anyway, who cares if the installer has it?
Again, GOG does not distribute games that include DRM, whether in the installer or in the game itself.
As far as I know all the games you can buy on GOG will be completely DRM free.
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